The 1st of October 1946, Nuremberg, Germany. After more than 10 months on a trial, 21 defendants
who are among the most important political, military, and economic leaders of Nazi Germany,
hear their sentences read. These high-ranking representatives of the criminal Nazi regime
have to finally take responsibility for their crimes and answer before an International Military
tribunal who would punish them for unspeakable atrocities committed during the Second World War.
It is only the first of many war crimes trials held after the Second World War and would become a
warning to war criminals and dictators everywhere. Once the true extent of the German atrocities,
especially against Jews, are revealed, 12 defendants out of the 21 are sentenced to
death by hanging. One of them is a German field marshal Wilhelm Keitel.
Wilhelm Keitel was born on the 22nd of September 1882 in the village of Helmscherode,
then part of the German Empire. He was only 6 years old when his mother died of childbed fever
in 1889 after the birth of his younger brother Bodewin, who later became an infantry general.
Wilhelm’s father was a landowner and he wanted to take over his estates. However,
because his father did not want to retire and wanted to continue to farm the estate himself,
Wilhelm joined the Prussian army as an artillery officer in 1901.
In April 1909, Keitel married Lisa Fontaine, a wealthy landowner's daughter.
Her father also owned Wülfel brewery which was temporarily the largest cooperative
brewery in Europe. The marriage produced six children, one of whom died young.
The First World War began on the 28th of July 1914.
Keitel, who served on the western front as a battery commander and then staff officer,
was seriously wounded by a shrapnel grenade in Flanders in 1914. After his recovery,
thanks to his organizational skills, he served in the Army General Staff from the spring of 1915.
The First World War ended on the 11th of November 1918 when the German leaders signed
the armistice in the Compiègne Forest in France. The introduction of new weapons like the machine
gun and gas warfare led to the enormous losses and the war claimed the lives of ten million
soldiers. Property and industry losses were catastrophic. As a result, the victorious powers
imposed a series of treaties upon the defeated powers. Among the treaties, the 1919 Treaty of
Versailles held Germany responsible for starting the war and liable for massive material damages.
The treaty imposed harsh penalties on the Germans including the loss of 13%
of its prewar territories, extensive reparation payments and demilitarization of the Rhineland.
The Reichswehr – the German Army – was restricted to 100,000 men.
In the new Weimar Republic, which was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933,
Keitel was retained in the newly created Reichswehr and played a part in organizing
the paramilitary Freikorps units. In the aftermath of World War I and during the German Revolution of
1918–19, Freikorps consisting largely of World War I veterans, were raised as paramilitary militias.
They were ostensibly mustered to fight on behalf of the government against the
Communists attempting to overthrow the Weimar Republic. However, many Freikorps also largely
despised the new Weimar Republic and were involved in assassinations of its supporters.
In 1924, Wilhelm Keitel was transferred to the Ministry of the Reichswehr in Berlin.
Keitel, then a colonel, served in the Truppenamt – an agency
which concealed the existence of the proscribed German Army General Staff.
After the death of his father, Keitel’s decision
to stay in the military was influenced not only by a prospect of promotion,
but also because of his wife's desire to be an officer's wife rather than a farmer.
Wilhelm Keitel played a crucial role in the German rearmament as in this capacity,
he was responsible for secretly planning, reorganizing, and eventually enlarging the
German army in direct violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Even after Adolf Hitler and
the Nazi party came into power in January 1933, German rearmament despite its scale,
remained a largely covert operation, carried out using front organizations such as glider clubs
for training pilots, sporting clubs, and Nazi SA militia groups for teaching infantry and combat
techniques. Later, however, this rearmament policy was openly and massively expanded.
In Nazi Germany, all power was centralized in Adolf Hitler's person and his word became
the highest law. Wilhelm Keitel became Hitler’s loyal “ yes-man “ willing to
do everything the Führer demanded of him. Keitel became known as "blindingly loyal
toady" of Hitler as his peers would call him behind his back.
In 1935 Wilhelm Keitel was appointed the head of the Armed Forces Office at the Reich Ministry
of War overseeing the army, navy, and air force. After the Ministry of War was abolished in 1938,
it was replaced by the German Armed Forces High Command which
allowed Adolf Hitler to consolidate power as commander-in-chief of the German military.
High Command was led by Wilhelm Keitel as Chief with the rank of a Reich Minister,
which essentially made him the second most powerful person in the Armed Forces'
hierarchy only after Hitler himself. This came as a surprise not only to the General Staff but also
to Wilhelm Keitel himself as everybody knew that he was not suitable for the job. Keitel’s peers
did not respect him. They only considered him a sycophant and “a stupid follower of
Hitler “, as they often called him, and frequently bypassed him going directly to their Führer.
Adolf Hitler did not value Keitel for his capabilities but because he was
“as loyal as a dog “ as the Führer once said. Hitler knew of Keitel’s limited
intellect and nervous disposition but appreciated his diligence and obedience.
Wilhelm Keitel also agreed with Adolf Hitler’s plans to redraw the postwar international
borders which the Nazis considered unfair and illegitimate. In early 1938, under increasing
pressure from pro-unification activists, Austrian chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg announced that there
would be a referendum on a possible union with Germany versus maintaining Austria's sovereignty
to be held on the 13th of March. Hitler threatened an invasion and ordered Keitel
to conduct military maneuvers near the Austrian border to make it appear an invasion was imminent.
Chancellor Schuschnigg resigned his office on the 11th of March. On the 12th of March 1938,
German troops entered Austria, and one day later, Austria was incorporated into Germany.
Thousands turned out to greet Adolf Hitler. For his participation in the annexation,
which became known as the Anschluss and was the Nazi German regime’s first
act of territorial aggression and expansion, Wilhelm Keitel was awarded the Anschluss Medal.
World War 2 started on the 1st of September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. Wilhelm Keitel was
involved in planning of the invasion and was fully aware of its criminal nature as mass arrests,
population transfers and mass murders had been planned long before. Ethnic cleansing
was to be conducted systematically against the Polish people. On the 7th of September 1939,
Reinhard Heydrich stated that all Polish nobles, clergy, and Jews were to be murdered.
On the 12th of September, Wilhelm Keitel added Poland's intelligentsia to the list. As a result,
in the first three months of war, from the fall of 1939 until the spring of 1940, some 60,000
former government officials, military officers in reserve, landowners, clergy, and members of
the Polish intelligentsia such as scientists, teachers, lawyers and doctors were executed
region by region in the so-called Intelligentsia action, including over 1,000 prisoners of war.
When the officer corps started to complaint about the atrocities committed in Poland and other
countries conquered by Nazi Germany, Keitel ignored them until the local commanders and
their soldiers became morally numbed to the horrible events which they were witnessing.
After the invasion of Poland, Wilhelm Keitel received a “bonus” of 100,000
Reichsmarks for his loyalty.
The German invasion of France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands started
on the 10th of May 1940 and became known as the Battle of France. These countries,
along with France were conquered within 6 weeks. After Germany defeated France, Keitel described
Hitler as “the greatest warlord of all time”. In order to further humiliate France,
Hitler ordered the document of armistice to be signed in the same railcar in which the
representatives of then defeated Germany signed the armistice at the end of the First World War.
Hitler had this railcar removed from the museum where it had been stored, and brought
to Compiègne Forest, the same place where the 1918 Armistice with Germany had been signed.
In this manner, the location of Germany's 1918 humiliation became the symbolic site
of the Third Reich's victory over France. The document was signed on the 22nd of June
1940 by General Keitel for Germany and General Huntziger for France.
Shortly after, Wilhelm Keitel was promoted to the rank of field marshal. However,
this did not change the way the high-ranking Nazis would look down on him and despise him.
Hermann Göring - the head of German air forces – the Luftwaffe - even
said that Keitel had "a sergeant's mind inside a field marshal's body".
From April 1941, Keitel issued and signed a series of criminal orders allowing the
execution of Jews, civilians and non-combatants for any reason.
Those carrying out the murders were exempted from court-martial or later being tried for war crimes.
During the upcoming months, Wilhelm Keitel was busy drawing up plans for
the invasion of the Soviet Union which became known as Operation Barbarossa.
Before the invasion, Hitler asked for war studies to be completed, including the study on economic
matters. The study of Georg Thomas, Hitler’s Chief economic strategist for the Wehrmacht – German
Armed Forces, detailed a few serious problems such as logistical delays due to the fact that
Russian railways were of a different gauge than German ones, insufficiency of German
transport vehicle tires for the task ahead of them, and most significantly, the Germans only
had two months worth of fuel oil and petrol to support the advancing assault. Wilhelm
Keitel bluntly dismissed the problems, telling Thomas that Hitler would not want to see it.
Operation Barbarossa began on Sunday the 22nd of June 1941. In September the same year,
Keitel issued an order to all commanders stating that the soldiers on the Eastern
Front had to use "unusual severity" to stamp out resistance and a response to
a loss of one German soldier was the execution of 50 to 100 "Communists"
Keitel was also increasing pressure for a more ruthless reprisal policy in German
occupied territories and in October 1942 he also signed the “Commando Order” which ordered
and authorized the killing of enemy special operations troops. The allied commandos were
to be killed without trial, even when captured in uniform or if they attempted to surrender.
He also drafted the "Night and Fog" decree that allowed German authorities to abduct suspected
members of the resistance by night, so that they effectively vanished without a trace.
German authorities applied the decree principally in German-occupied western Europe: Belgium,
France, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands. German occupation authorities and
their collaborators arrested approximately 7,000 individuals under the provisions of this decree.
After capture, they were interrogated and frequently tortured. Those who survived
were taken to concentration camps such as Gross-Rosen and Natzweiler-Struthof. The
decree was meant to intimidate the local populations into submission,
by denying friends and families of seized persons any knowledge of their whereabouts or their fate.
In addition, Keitel also signed orders authorizing reprisals
against the families of Allied volunteers.
However, Keitel was also affected by the war as his youngest son Hans-Georg was killed in
July 1941 during the German attack on the Soviet Union. An attack that Keitel had helped execute.
At the end of the war, his eldest son, Karl Heinz, was made a prisoner-of-war by the Russians.
On the 20th of July 1944, Claus von Stauffenberg and other
conspirators attempted to assassinate Hitler.
After the bomb had exploded, Keitel personally led the wounded Hitler out of the room.
In the days that followed, Hitler ordered a massive hunt for conspirators which continued
for months. Many of them appeared before the notorious People’s Courts for show trials, but
this practice was ended as it gave conspirators a platform to condemn the regime. In the end more
than 7,000 people were arrested, and 4,980 were executed, often on the barest evidence.
Wilhelm Keitel not only sat on the Army "court of honour" that handed
over many officers who were involved, but on Hitler's orders, he sent two generals
to Erwin Rommel, a famous German field marshal known as the Desert Fox whose
participation in the assassination attempt remains ambiguous until today, offering him
the choice of a suicide or court-martial. To protect his family, Rommel chose the former
and committed suicide using a cyanide pill. He was then given a state funeral, and it was
announced that he had succumbed to his injuries from the strafing of his staff car in Normandy.
Adolf Hitler committed suicide on the 30th of April 1945. On the 7th of May 1945 in Reims,
France, Alfred Jodl, Chief of the Operations Staff of German Armed Forces High Command,
on behalf of Karl Dönitz, who briefly succeeded Hitler as head of state,
signed Germany's unconditional surrender on all fronts.
A few hours later, a response was received from the Soviet High Command stating that
the Act of Surrender in Reims was unacceptable. They insisted that not Jodl, deputized by Dönitz,
a civilian head of state, but the supreme commander of all German forces, Wilhelm Keitel,
should personally sign the document. One of the reasons was a fear of new stab-in-the-back myth
which maintained that the Imperial German Army did not lose World War I on the battlefield,
but was instead betrayed by certain citizens on the home front—especially
Jews and Communists – who they claimed had surrendered German honor to a shameful peace.
As a result, a second signing was arranged in Berlin.
On the night of the 8th of May 1945, Wilhelm Keitel signed the definitive
German Instrument of Surrender which was the legal document that effected
the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany on all fronts and ended World War II in Europe
In the end, justice finally caught up with Keitel when he was arrested by the allies and tried at
the Nuremberg Trials which were held against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany.
He was convicted of conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, planning,
initiating and waging wars of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Keitel admitted that he knew that many of Hitler's orders were illegal but kept
insisting that he had only followed them when ordered and it was all Hitler’s responsibility.
Regarding the atrocities he said that they had developed, one from the other,
step by step and without any foreknowledge of the consequences, destiny took its tragic course,
with its fateful consequences. He even said he would suffer more
agony of conscience and self-reproach in his cell than anybody would ever know.
Prison pyschiatrist G. M. Gilbert said that Keitel "had no more backbone than a jellyfish."
On the 1st of October 1946 the International Military tribunal
found Wilhelm Keitel guilty on all four counts and sentenced him to death by hanging.
His request for a military execution by firing squad was denied due to the criminal rather than
military nature of his acts. On the 16th of October 1946, the day of Keitel’s execution,
Keitel told the prison chaplain: “You have helped me more than you know. May Christ,
my savior, stand by me all the way. I shall need him so much”.
He then received Communion and was executed later that day by American Army sergeant
John C. Woods who had no documented pre-war experience as a hangman. It is believed that
he was deliberately bad at his job to make the 10 Nazi war criminals that he executed on that day,
suffer as they all died in long agonizing death. The Nazis executed by sergeant Woods fell from the
gallows with a drop insufficient to snap their necks, resulting in their death by
strangulation that in some cases lasted several minutes. With Wilhelm Keitel, it was even worse.
After he had said his last words “ I call on God Almighty to have mercy on the German
people. More than two million German soldiers went to their death for the fatherland before me. I
follow now my sons – all for Germany” , Keitel was hanged but because the trap door was too small,
it caused him painful head injuries and as he fell from the gallows with insufficient force to
snap his neck, his horrible convulsing lasted 28 long minutes before he died. He was 64 years old.
After that, his corpse was cremated and scattered in the river Isar.
There were no tears shed for Wilhelm Keitel.
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